1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and particularly to a Serial ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) connector having increased strength.
2. Description of Related Art
It is expected that Serial ATA, which is featured in lower voltage and lower pin count, will eventually completely replace today's parallel ATA. According to the Serial ATA standard, a Serial ATA device, generally disk drives and storage peripherals, may be connected to a host through a cable. For connection via cable, a device plug connector mates with a cable receptacle connector at one end of the cable. A second cable receptacle connector at the other end of the cable is adapted for mating with a host plug connector, so that an electrical connection is established between the Serial ATA device and the host. The standard Serial ATA device plug connector comprises two L-shaped blades with respective signal/ground and power/ground contacts disposed thereon for being inserted into corresponding L-shaped receiving slots of a standard Serial ATA cable receptacle connector. Signal/ground and power/ground contacts are also respectively disposed on one side of the receiving slots.
The standard Serial ATA connector demonstrates acceptable performance when engaged with a backplane of the host or a mating connector. However, the standard Serial ATA connector, which is relatively tiny in configuration, has severe limitations in cabled environments and is prone to breakage. The provision of the receiving slots of the cable receptacle connector and the thin blades of the device plug connector as well as the spaces thereabout significantly decreases the strength of the respective housings. As a result, a stress is apt to be applied at the time of connection and the housing is susceptible to breakage at the time of connection and disconnection. Particularly, the blade of the device plug connector is easy to break in the event that the cable is deflected in such a way as to act as a lever arm concentrating forces on the blade of the plug connector. Also, a rough pull of the cable may result in breakage of upper and lower slot walls of the cable receptacle connector since they are fairly thin.
Currently, strength requirements are becoming more stringent. One possible solution to meet with this requirement is to use a very high strength engineering plastic, especially one that is filled with glass fibers. However, the strength and rigidity still may not be high enough to avoid breakage in normal use where a pull on the cable of more than four pounds in different directions may be applied. Also, glass fiber reinforced plastics have strengths and rigidities that are not highly consistent. Furthermore, this solution causes another unexpected inconvenience, that is, the cable extending from the connector housing becomes liable to be bent in an acute angle at its junction with the connector housing due to an abrupt change of the stiffness at that location. This bending may cause breakage of the cable conductors.
Accordingly, a Serial ATA connector which overcomes the breakage problem presented in the prior art is desired.